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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"If the Koch brothers didn't exist, the left would have to invent them. They're the plutocrats from central casting -- oil-and-gas billionaires ready to buy any congressman, fund any lie, fight any law, bust any union, despoil any landscape, or shirk any (tax) burden to push their free-market religion and pump up their profits."

The American Legislative Exchange Council -- ALEC -- has for decades worked to fight protection of public health from environmental threats. Funded with corporate money, the group has won non-profit tax status from the federal government even as it lobbies for industrial interests on an industrial scale. Now, because it backed the gun law that kept Trayvon Martin's killer from arrest, some large corporations are cashing out from ALEC.

"The deaths of up to 20,000 migrating birds this year in a wildlife refuge near the Oregon border has renewed debate about resource management on the Klamath River, where myriad competing interests are fighting for water rights."

"Sea level rise from global warming is well on the way to doubling the risk of coastal floods 4 feet or more over high tide by 2030 at locations nationwide. In the lower 48 states, nearly 300 energy facilities stand on land below that level, including natural gas infrastructure, electric power plants, and oil and gas refineries. Many more facilities are at risk at higher levels, where flooding will become progressively more likely with time as the sea continues to rise. These results come from a Climate Central combined analysis of datasets from NOAA, USGS and FEMA."

"Federal Fish and Wildlife Service officials say that a drought-induced bird die-off in the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge along the California-Oregon border has ended. But they warn that unless proposals to reconfigure water distribution along the Klamath River are enacted, the problem could recur."

"To the untrained eye, a weed is just a weed, and few of us can tell a thistle from a teasel. But for Paul Heiple and his team of Weed Warriors, knowing the difference is essential to their work routing out invasive plants that threaten the native species at Edgewood Park, a 500-acre natural preserve that overlooks California’s Silicon Valley."

"New research shows that killer whales are inhaling bacteria, fungi and viruses once believed to be found only on land. Some of the pathogens are highly virulent. And some are even antibiotic-resistant."

"Ken Shefton is furious about what the government knew eight years ago and never told him — that the neighborhood where his five sons have been playing is contaminated with lead. Their Cleveland home is a few blocks from a long-forgotten factory that spewed toxic lead dust for about 30 years."

"WASHINGTON — A hunting bill passed by the House on Tuesday makes it harder to restrict hunting and fishing on public lands and ensures that the hunter's arsenal will continue to include lead bullets."

"KOMODO ISLAND, Indonesia — Coral gardens that were among Asia’s most spectacular, teeming with colorful sea life just a few months ago, have been transformed into desolate gray moonscapes by illegal fishermen who use explosives or cyanide to kill or stun their prey."

"For a man used to pomp and paparazzi, King Juan Carlos of Spain looked shaken, emerging from a hospital in Madrid Wednesday after hip surgery. 'I'm very sorry,' he said, blinking into the cameras, sheepish, and leaning on his crutches. 'I made a mistake, and it won't happen again.'"

"WASHINGTON -- Oil and gas companies will have to capture toxic and climate-altering gases from wells, storage sites and pipelines under new air quality standards issued on Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency. The rule is the first federal effort to address serious air pollution associated with the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which releases toxic and cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and hexane, as well as methane, a powerful greenhouse gas."